Catching Up The Native Population…

There has been a big jump in the number of Asian women having abortions in the UK, according to figures from the Department of Health.

They show there were 15,197 terminations in 2007, compared with 10,084 in 2003 for all age groups.

It seems fears over ‘non-assimilation’ might have been groundless:

Experts say more Asian women are now in open relationships and are having sex whereas culturally in the past it was something they did after marriage.

So now a new source of income and employment beckons, for those public sector workers and private companies who make a living from this area:

Health professionals are calling for contraceptive services to be made more accessible and be better promoted in the Asian community. The rise in abortions is particularly reflected in Birmingham.

Sexual health advisor Penny Barber from the Brook Advisory Clinic in the city told the BBC: "Young Asian people are more likely to come and visit us having had unprotected sex, they appear to be less likely to be using ongoing contraception and they are more likely to be referred for terminations."

Which, for the Brook Advisory Clinic, represents a hell of a missed opportunity!

Carolyn Philips, who runs the clinic, says fears over confidentiality means many women will not visit their GPs and they do not always find family planning clinics welcoming.

"If you think about them historically they are pretty much geared up for white middle-class women," she said.

The UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe and in an attempt to tackle this, the government is sending family planning nurses into schools to help pupils access their services better.

Ms Philips says a similar campaign is needed to promote contraception within the Asian community too.

Well, of course they were ‘mainly geared up for white middle-class women’. That’s like saying QuickFit is ‘mainly geared up for car owners’, isn’t it…?

But they are on a roll, and don’t seem to want to let little things like ‘multiculturalism’ stop them expanding into this new target population:

"There need to be campaigns targeting Asian women even if it's not quite within their culture and it's something their parents won't be happy about - these women need to know that they feel very, very safe and this is something they can access."

Hmm, this could potentially be explosive…